Boon Pong, using as cover his contract with the Imperial Japanese Army to supply the camps of Allied POWs working on the Burma Railway in Kanchanaburi, smuggled medicine, money and contraband food to the POWs and is credited by many with saving thousands of lives during the building of the railway.
With access to medicines, the death rate of the prisoners was reduced from five a day in May 1943 to one a week by the following November.
[3] He was awarded the British King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom and named an officer of the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau.
Boonpong also figures prominently in Beyond the Bamboo Screen, a collection of anecdotes by Scottish PoWs.
Ruangsak Loychusak portrayed Boonpong Sirivejjabhandu in Boon Pong a thai television soap opera based on him.